


In Troubles Unconquered

by thesepossessedbylight



Series: Fire Over The Holy City [3]
Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, F/F, Fire Over The Holy City AU, got an idea in my head couldn't get it out, yep that's an AU of my own AU I know wtf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesepossessedbylight/pseuds/thesepossessedbylight
Summary: In Fire Over The Holy City, Serena's the one with the tattoo: a little, five-pointed nautical star. But what if Bernie were the one with the tattoo? How would Serena react?**You do NOT need to have read Fire in order to understand this. All the info you need is in the beginning notes.





	In Troubles Unconquered

**Author's Note:**

> All you need to know is this: Serena and Bernie are both ex-members of the Special Operations Executive, the British spy outfit that Nancy Wake was part of. Bernie was injured in Paris when she took a Nazi bullet meant for Alex. Alex died of another bullet but Bernie was airlifted out and she's spent the last few months recuperating in London, while the Battle for Britain raged on. She's now got a job in a little hospital in Clydebank, a tiny industrial town in Scotland by the river Clyde. To everyone's surprise but ours, who should she meet in Clydebank but our very own Serena Campbell. Basically this is all background though and this story is nothing more than an awful lot of Serena lusting after Bernie's tattoo.   
> Fire Over The Holy City is from Bernie's POV, but this is from Serena's.

Serena Campbell may now be a civilian doctor working in a tiny, relatively unimportant hospital on the Clyde River, but she was once a member of the Special Operations Executive, and - so that nobody might misunderstand - that means that even now, she focuses on the job, she gets it done, and she gets out. Sure, she cares about people. She cares about Jason. She cares for the patients, injured or sick, who arrive on her ward by their dozens each day. But apart from that, people - living people, non-injured people, people who are alive and well and can walk out of her ward on their own two feet - don’t really cross her radar that often. 

Except for the new doctor. Major Berenice Wolfe. Bit of an enigma, that one, Serena thinks, once, late at night as she’s sitting at her desk finishing discharge forms. Her beautiful hands; Serena had noted them the first time she clapped eyes on Berenice Wolfe. Surgeon’s hands or pianist’s hands; for Wolfe to be any other occupation would be criminal negligence. Her dark eyes; how the smile on her lips hadn’t quite reached the depths of her eyes, how Serena had found herself beginning to sway closer all the time while they were talking, while Serena was introducing Wolfe to her ward. Her posture; rigid, upright, graceful. Serena finds herself gazing into space, sometimes, imagining that posture brought to bear on the dance floor: ballet maybe, or ballroom, those strong hands clasped in someone else’s fist, someone’s fingers spread across Wolfe’s lithe spine, her leg nudging Berenice’s forward as they move together in synchronicity - 

Serena gives herself an abrupt shake, refocuses on the forms with a wry smile. The point is, she spends altogether too much time thinking about the woman. 

 

***

 

Bernie is good - alarmingly so - with the patients. Serena watches her interact with them, watches her charm them into letting her take their temperature with a minimum of fuss, watches her talk with people who’ve received a bad diagnosis, how she helps them forget their pains, their aches, even if only for a little while. Serena wishes, sometimes, she could be that good, remembers how _long_ it took her to develop anything like an adequate bedside manner, thinks ruefully of how even now, when she’s been doing this for over twenty years she still sometimes feels wrong-footed, awkward. Wishes she could be that friendly. That kind. 

Serena asks Bernie, once, how she manages. They’re in the changing room at the end of a long shift and Bernie’s headfirst in her locker. It’s the only reason she gets the guts to ask, standing there with her trousers unzipped and hanging off her hips.

“How do you manage it?” she blurts, shoving an arm into her shirtsleeves. 

“Manage what?” Bernie asks, righting herself and peering at her through her fringe. It’s been pinned back all shift and it’s standing straight up from Bernie’s head in little tufts; Serena has to squash the urge to smooth it back down. 

“Being so nice to patients!” Serena says, sounding exasperated, but she shoots a smile at Bernie to let her know she’s not angry.

“What do you mean?” Bernie asks, pulling her uniform top off, and this time Serena rolls her eyes.

“You know," Serena gestures with the arm currently wearing her shirt, and her shirt flies off and lands draped over Bernie's bag. 

"Buggeration," she mutters, padding over to retrieve it. The muffled honk of Bernie’s laugh reaches her ears, and she warns, ”You didn't hear me say that!”

Bernie’s grinning at her, dangling her uniform top from the fingers of one hand and standing there confident in her bra and skirt, and it sends a warm, pleased feeling shivering down her spine as she straightens her back, shirt in hand. 

“Anyway,” Bernie says, turning back to her locker and beginning to fit her long arms into her civvies shirt. “Manage what?”

But Serena’s no longer listening: as Bernie turned Serena saw a brief flash of black printed boldly across the pale skin on Bernie’s ribs, and she’s left momentarily breathless. It vanishes as Bernie wraps her shirt around her body, buttoning it up with swift, economical movements, and Serena experiences a brief pang of loss that she covers with a momentary cough. 

“Hmm?” Bernie says again, glancing at Serena as she tucks her shirt into the waistband of her skirt. 

Fortunately Serena’s had enough time to calm her breathing, and so she gazes at Bernie fondly for a few, fleeting moments before replying, “You, honestly. How’d you manage to be so nice to the patients?” 

 

***

 

Two weeks later, Bernie meets Serena at the door of the hospital, at the beginning of their shift, looking pained and stiff. She gulps an entire mug of awful, dark chicory-coffee in one go, wincing dramatically and pulling a disgusted face as she orders another from Pulses. She cradles the next cup in her hands as they walk towards the AAU together. Serena shoots a concerned glance towards her, and - to her surprise - Bernie returns the look, a small smile on her lips, before she winces again and massages her temple briefly with her free hand. 

Serena stops dead.

“Are you alright?” she asks, hands already reaching out to see what she can do, how she can help, how she can alleviate pain. It’s the only thing she’s ever been trained for, after all. 

“Yeah,” Bernie mutters, eyes closed. “Just a bit of a migraine. Coffee’s meant to help, but I forgot this junk doesn’t have any caffeine in it.”

Serena pauses. Moves, very gently, to brush her hand down Bernie’s upper arm. “Do you want to take the day off?” she asks, and is sure to pitch her voice low, quiet, to avoid hurting Bernie any more than she already has been. 

“No, no, I’ll be fine, I swear,” Bernie says, but as Serena lowers her hand their fingers brush, shooting stars, electric and beautiful, and Serena isn’t entirely sure it’s an accident.

 

***

 

Later that morning, Serena is due a break for morning tea. She looks up from the last patient she’s finished talking with, and realises she hasn’t seen Bernie for - hours? No, more like… the last ten minutes. 

_Any_ way, Serena thinks to herself, and sets off for the stairs to the roof.

She’s unsurprised to find Bernie standing on the roof, silhouetted against a blue sky while a cigarette droops from her fingers. Serena walks forward on silent feet, snags the cigarette and takes a long drag herself. Bernie turns her head and looks, her thousand-mile gaze visibly recalibrating, readjusting to the proximity of Serena’s eyes and hands. Serena smiles, close-lipped around the cigarette in her mouth before she tilts her head back, stretches her neck long and lithe to the sky and exhales, the smoke drifting out in a grey cloud, like those from the factories on the Clyde.

“Hello you,” she says, and hands Bernie back the cigarette. 

Bernie clears her throat. Takes a long drag of the cigarette and exhales. Serena discovers that she can’t quite tear her eyes away from Bernie’s thin lips, pursed around the smoke. She wonders what it would be like to have those lips on hers. 

She grabs the cigarette back, because okay. That’s new.

Except it’s not really, is it. She thinks back to that brief flash of black ink that she saw scrawled against Bernie’s ribs, and wonders if maybe her wish to see, to see more than the glimpse she was allotted, was less about a wish to know the meaning of the words and more about her desire to touch, to lick, to press against Bernie’s warm skin so she was as much a part of Bernie as Bernie was of her. Something roils, hot and eager, in her belly, and Serena makes a conscious effort to put it away, subdue it.

She touches Bernie’s shoulder, briefly, and is gratified when Bernie immediately turns to gaze at her. 

“How’s the migraine?” 

Bernie shrugs, using the shoulder Serena isn’t touching. “Getting better. Less pickaxe in the skull and more… gentle hammer thumps, but it’s getting there.”

Serena winces. “Migraines are awful, aren’t they?” she says, and her hand slips, almost without thought, to Bernie’s waist, pulling her towards her and softly, so very gently, knocking the sides of their heads together. Bernie nods, so Serena can hear the sound of their hair sliding together, and wraps an arm around her, pulling her closer still. Peripherally, Serena is aware that Bernie’s thumb is rubbing against the silk of her shirt in small, rhythmic circles, but then she realises that her hand is covering the spot where Bernie’s tattoo sits, hidden beneath baggy hospital scrubs, dark against her winter-pale skin, and her rapid, gasped shudder of breath is too obvious to be ignored.

 

***

 

The rooftop is the first time Serena feels tempted to lean into Bernie, to feel those soft lips against her own, but it’s not the last. Over the next few weeks she discovers Bernie in her dreams, feels her arch against Serena’s touch, hears her soft groans as Serena kisses her and kisses her repeatedly, feels the muscle moving strong over her ribs as Serena’s fingers track their way across her scarred, beautiful body.

She can’t quite look Bernie in the eye, and so she invites her home for dinner, lets Jason talk about codes with Bernie while Serena gazes her fill in surreptitious, stolen glances. Bernie doesn’t seem to suspect anything, thank God, but Serena wonders if she’s imagining the fond, pleased look Bernie sometimes gets when Serena praises her, Bernie’s charmed, delighted smile when Serena declares her willingness to flout some petty, bureaucratic rule. They could be quite the team, Serena often thinks, Bernie and Serena. Bernie-and-Serena, but she doesn’t tell anyone, mostly because if anyone asked what she meant by the statement she’s not entirely sure she’d know what to tell them. 

 

***

 

And then, of course, the Blitz. It’s pure miracle Bernie is staying with Serena that terrible night. Had she been anywhere else but there she could so easily have been killed, and Serena might never have known what became of her.

Not that that feels like much of a consolation while they’re walking in the chilly March air to the bomb shelter. Not that Serena feels much cheered, even when Bernie’s fingers find her in the crush of the crowd and they walk, shoulders brushing, fingers entwined. Bernie’s hand is steady, even now when anyone would be terrified. True surgeon’s hands, Serena thinks inanely to herself, and then - as they reach the door of the bomb shelter and duck inside to find a seat - true _soldier’s_ hands.

The noise, when it starts, is terrible. Junker airplanes rage overhead, and the silence before their bombs land is deafening and deathly still. Serena’s never experienced London at war, she’s never heard the sound of Junkers from the uncertain safety of a tube station, and she flinches with every new siren-wail. But she turns to Bernie, turns in time to see her slop coffee over her hand and onto the floor with the force of her shudder. 

Instantly, Serena forgets her own fear. It’s something beyond instinct, beyond reflex, and far, _far_ beyond conscious thought to protect Bernie, and maybe some day she’ll think that through, really analyse it, but for now there’s no hesitation: she takes the coffee cup, sets it down, and then she stretches her arm out and pulls Bernie close. To her surprise, Bernie tucks her face into the warm angle between Serena’s neck and her collarbone, trying to calm her breathing. Bernie’s breath shudders out against Serena’s skin, and Serena tries, very hard, not to let her thoughts follow. 

“Hey,” she says, very softly, and she’s proud when her voice doesn’t quiver at all. “How are you?”

Bernie doesn’t answer, but she stretches out one hand and curls it around Serena’s knee, pulling her closer still. Her hand is a warm weight against the thin fabric of Serena’s skirt, and Serena tries so very hard not to take it personally, to know that Bernie is panicking because she’s just left London where the German bombers so nearly ruled the skies, but then her steady, strong fingers curl, digging in to the hollow of Serena’s inner knee, and _oh._

“Tell,” she says. Clears her throat. “Tell me about your tattoo.”

It’s the first thing she can think of to get her mind off the feeling of Bernie’s hand, and she doesn’t even stop to consider if it’s rude. But it makes Bernie look up, gaze at her through half-lidded eyes.

“My,” Bernie starts, and pauses, hands tightening and shoulders hunching as if braced for impact as another Jericho siren screams, heralding its payload of death. “My tattoo… Oh.”

To Serena’s surprise, Bernie blushes.

“You know how I said I was a member of the SOE, back when I first arrived in Clydebank.”

Serena nods breathlessly.

“That wasn’t entirely true. There’s an organisation - the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry - that’s acting as a cover for SOE operatives,” Bernie says, awkward at revealing this new twist in her background. “I was part of FANY long before I ever joined the SOE. I signed up two years out of medical school, when I couldn’t find a job because of all the _fucking_ men telling me I should forget about medicine and get married like a good little woman…”

Bernie looks straight at Serena, who is mesmerised, entangled in the force of her gaze. “I got the tattoo because FANY was the first place I ever felt useful, like I might belong. I felt useful in Paris though. And I feel like I might belong here.”

Serena’s leaning closer towards Bernie now, her gaze sliding slowly from Bernie’s dark, pleading eyes to her parted lips, and her words come out as the threadiest of whispers. “What does it say?”

“ _Arduis invicta,”_ Bernie says, and Serena tries not to betray the jolt of desire that courses through her at the sound of Bernie’s mouth perfectly shaping those rich Latin vowels. “In troubles unconquered.”

Serena mutters something, so far under her breath even she’s not entirely sure what she’s just said. But Bernie’s eyes are bright and fixed on hers, all previous fear forgotten, and somewhere in their depths she finds the courage to lean forward closer still. Her hand moves, almost of its own accord, and frames Bernie’s face. Bernie leans into the touch, her lips turning slightly upwards, and Serena moves closer still, and finally they’re kissing, soft and sweet in the underground shelter. Serena’s other hand slides to cover Bernie’s ribs and when they eventually break apart Bernie is already laughing softly at Serena. “Oh, my darling Serena,” she says, and Serena blushes, shy and pleased. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god you guys. I was meant to be writing a legal ethics essay this weekend (cab-rank rule fucking hell) but this idea wouldn't leave me alone. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Also, re the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, since I was doing some research for an original novel I'm in the process of writing (fml): it's correct that they were a cover organisation for SOE operatives, including (but don't quote me on this) Nancy Wake, who posed as a FANY nurse while on training in Britain, in order to keep her real mission (for the SOE) under deeeeeeep cover.  
> Also 'arduis invicta' is their actual motto.


End file.
